Battle in Seattle

The film is based on the 1999 WTO Conference in Seattle and how the protests surrounding it got out of hand.

It does not glorify the civil disobedience but rather strives for a balance for both sides. The protests and traffic disturbances caused humanitarian causes to take the biggest hits. Resources were shifted to the main part of the conference, cutting off speaking time from causes like Doctors Without Borders that would usually happen alongside, while all relevant people are gathered in the same locale.

But much more than paint a big picture, it focuses on the human stories, which takes away some of the force somehow. Peppered in are TV clips from Seattle used to cover that part of the story.

It does sport quite the impressive cast and is thoroughly watchable although it is never quite clear where it stands or if, indeed, it takes sides at all.

6/10

Identity

The lawyer of Malcolm Rivers makes one last ditch effort to stay the execution of his client. Rivers, convicted of murdering six people a few years back is brought to a middle-of-the-night hearing, where the lawyer and a psychiatrist try to prove that he was not aware of what he was doing because of his multiple personality disorder.

The many people in Rivers' head all end up in a motel in the pouring rain that keeps them from getting where they want to go. The group is as random as can be, including a family with small child, a prostitute, an actress, a couple of criminals, a former cop...

What happens in the court hearing and is played out by the character in the motel is that the one personality that made Rivers kill has to be irradicated. To achieve this one by one the people at the motel get killed off until the sitting judge is convinced that the culprit is gone.

The real story in the film is what is going on at the motel. The characters don't seem to be aware of what they actually are in the bigger picture, so this plays out as a quite brutal whodunit. Each person that dies gets marked with a room key, counting the bodies down from 10 to 1. They all hurl accusations and cannot seem to find any common ground on how to handle their situtation. Halfway throught the killings, one of the most level-headed of the group, Ed, turns out to be the personality that the committee around Rivers can work with.

This is when the two stories overlap, Ed suddenly finds himself strapped to a chair a not recognizing himself in the mirror. He is confused as to how he is no longer in the pouring rain by the motel. But this really turns out to be the way in. When all but one of the characters at the motel are gone, the committee is satisfied with their progress and Rivers' death sentence is overturned.

However, on the way back to the prison the psychiatrist realizes to late that one of the personalities believed to have died in an explosion acutally survived and that was the very one they would have needed to eliminate. Deadly mistake.

Despite the flaws and the confusing set up I really, really enjoy this film.

8/10

Killing them Soflty

When a illegal poker game gets robbed for the second time, a hitman by the name of Cogan is brought in to kill the guys that did it. Everybody knows that Markie, the man that runs the poker game, orchestrated the first robbery and even though now everyone is convinced he had nothing to do with the second robbery, Cogan shoots him anyway to restore order and faith in the Mob protected games.

The small time crooks that actually did it suffer similar fates, because one of them - a heroin addict - cannot keep his mouth shut and brags to his would-be drug runner about it. All of this gets complicated by another hitman brought in who causes trouble to Cogan because he is a drunk and constantly soliciting hookers.

Yes, the story is confusing with longish conversations and somewhat hard to follow. But it is pretty to watch and has quiet the noir feeling about it (all that rain).

Here is an example of a rather beautiful, if brutal, scene. Markie gets shot:

6/10